Boy-Friendly Easy Bake Oven: Teen Girl Goes to Bat for Little Brother
Dec. 18, 2012 — -- A 4-year-old boy's big sister who went to bat for him by petitioning Hasbro to make a version of the classic Easy Bake Oven for boys got a surprise this holiday season when the company invited her to see the new, boy-friendly model of the timeless toy.
McKenna Pope, 13, didn't have to go all the way to the North Pole, but simply went to YouTube to make an appeal for her 4-year-old brother, Gavin, and the one thing he wants from Santa this year.
"I want a dinosaur Easy Bake Oven," Gavin said.
As it turns out, it's not that easy. The pint-sized aspiring chef was hoping for a color that wasn't just for girls. But Hasbro only makes the Easy Bake Oven in a pink and purple-floral print.
"Only girls play with it," the 4-year-old complained.
So his big sister then stirred things up with a petition on Change.org. She asked Hasbro to offer a more gender-neutral color for the toy, and include boys in its commercials. The petition got more than 40,000 signatures
Easy Bake Oven models have come in all sorts of colors since 1963, including teal, yellow, silver and blue. And when Hasbro welcomed McKenna and her family into its headquarters Monday in Pawtucket, R.I., she got to see them all, including their newest model, in black and silver.
"They had like a blanket covering it, and then they took it off, and when he saw it, you could like see his eyes light up," McKenna said.
The color change "has been in development over the past 18 months" and will become available next fall, Hasbro told ABC News
"What I had wanted to happen was coming into fruition," McKenna said. "It was just, like, so amazing."
